NBC Parlays Rescheduled NFL Game Into a Huge Night in the Ratings

The postponement of the "Sunday Night Football" game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings took a toll on NBC’s Sunday ratings, but the rescheduled game gave the network a huge win Tuesday night, TVbytheNumbers.com reports.

NBC destroyed its main competition, CBS’s "Kennedy Center Honors," on another night of mostly repeat programming. The Peacock Network wound up with an average rating of 7.3 for the night in the 18-49 demo, distancing itself from also-rans CBS (1.6 average rating), Fox, (1.3), Univision (1.3) and ABC (1.0).

In total viewers it was more of the same, with NBC way out front with an average of 21.5 million to CBS’s 9.8 million, Fox’s 4.0 million, ABC’s 3.6 million and Univision’s 3.3 million.

At 8 p.m. the game kicked off with a 6.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic, while ABC’s broadcast of "Rudolph’s Shiny New Year" managed only a 1.2 in the same demo for the hour. The other networks aired repeats.

From 9-11 p.m. the NBC NFL broadcast averaged a 7.65 in the 18-49 demo, while CBS’s "Kennedy Center Honors"–which featured Oprah Winfrey and Paul McCartney being honored–averaged a 1.5 in the demo.